Netflix had its first real stinker of a quarter, losing subscribers for the first time ever and forced to warn of a coming bloodbath for password-sharers. The stock is down 35% in a day, wiping $50bn off the company's market value. — Read the rest

A lake monster briefly emerged from the water during Sunday's Wells Fargo Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. According the tournament's director of communication, it was most likely a large catfish's fin, but we know the truth. — Read the rest

China's Ant Group plans to sell off its U.S.-based biometric security firm EyeVerify, which identifies you by scanning your eyeballs. The sale comes as tension grows between Beijing and Washington over how and where sensitive user data is hosted, the Financial Times reports. — Read the rest

In the aftermath of the MAGA Militia Assault on the capitol buildings, numerous financial, healthcare, and property corporations are re-thinking their approaches to political donations. Popular Information reports:

In the last three cycles, [the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association] PAC has donated $959,060 to Republican candidates and $359,550 to Democratic candidates.

A recent investigation from the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit corporate and government accountability research institute, and its LittleSis database partners breaks down some of the ways that oil producers such as Chevron, Shell, and Wells Fargo are closely intertwined with police departments in cities like Seattle, Chicago, Washington, New Orleans and Salt Lake City. — Read the rest

The FBI is seeking help from the public to catch the appropriately nicknamed "bad wig bandit" who is blamed for a series of bank robberies in North Carolina.

Until recently, Jackie Fielder was living in her van. At 25, the Stanford sociology grad couldn't afford rent in San Francisco.

Back in 2016, it looked like the private prison industry would finally die, thanks to an Obama memo directing the DoJ to reduce their use for federal prisoners, but the sector retrenched, doubling down on the slave-labor camps it maintained for US immigration authorities, and aggressively lobbying states to jail their citizens in private prisons. — Read the rest

If you leave a senior US government position, Elizabeth Warren wants you to wait at least four years before taking a job at a "market dominant" company — any company with a $150b (or larger) market cap, or that controls "the product or labor supply in their industry."

When Apple caved to pressure from the Chinese government and yanked an Ios app that let users avoid being attacked by the city-state's murderous, rampaging police forces, it was merely continuing a long tradition of capitulation to Chinese authorities, who control access to some of Apple's most important customers as well as the factories that make the bulk of Apple's products.

Edelman is one of the world's leading PR firms, and despite the fact that they're the go-to if you want to launder the reputations of the House of Saud or the Transcanada pipeline by running massive fake-grassroots campaigns on social media, they also bill themselves as an ethical firm, refusing to take engagements for coal, tobacco or gun companies (they will, however run smear campaigns against vegan mayo).

A new bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes personal, criminal liability for top executives of companies turning over more than $1B/year when those companies experience data breaches and scams due to negligence (many of the recent high-profile breaches would qualify, including the Equifax giga-breach, as well as many of Wells Fargo's string of scams and scandals).

Though firms may worry about profits now that Trump's decision to let the world boil in its own juices rather than offend the hydrocarbon lobby (Coke may run out of water, Disney may run out of themepark-goers), the latest report from UK nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project shows that companies are also privately exulting in the new possibilities opened up by climate catastrophes and the ensuing hidden misery.

Andrew Smith is Trump's chief of the FTC Consumer Protection Bureau, in charge of investigating companies that abuse Americans — but he can't, because he has previously provided services for over 100 of America's largest companies, including Facebook, a whack of payday lenders, Amazon, American Airlines, Amex, BoA, Capital One, Citigroup, John Deere, Equifax, Expedia, Experian, Glaxosmithkline, Goldman Sachs, Jpmorgan, Linkedin, Microsoft, Paypal, Redbubble, Twitter, Sotheby's, Transunion, Uber, Verizon, Visa, Disney and Wells Fargo.

New York City's "marshal" service is a throwback to the Dutch colonial days; the 35 marshals are appointed by the mayor, draw no salary, and earn their livings by skimming a percentage off of the debts they collect, operating with impunity and reaching around the world.

Between Trump's massive tax-breaks for the super-rich and rules like California's disastrous Prop 13, our cities perennially cash-starved and have led to the erosion of the same public services that make cities attractive to businesses (for example, the subway, public education, roads, grid and other public services that made NYC so attractive to tax-dodging Amazon for its second headquarters).

The American right spent generations lauding the "free enterprise" spirit of "cutting red tape," contrasting its private sector ethos with the stodgy, Stalinist ways of the USSR, where bureaucrats weaponize forms and other paperwork to oppress the citizenry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9I-dgJ_n40

The City of Los Angeles sends the nation-wrecking finance industry more than $100MM/year in the form of fees and penalties for its banking business, supporting the institutions whose racist lending practices, financial engineering and mortgage fraud have wreaked untold harm on the city's residents.

One of the cases that the Supreme Court heard this season was NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc. which rolls up several cases where employers are hoping to establish that they can force prospective employees to sign a mandatory arbitration waiver as a condition of employment; if they prevail, the majority of workplaces in America will likely adopt the practice.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Elizabeth Warren's gift that keeps on giving — one of the most effective US government agencies, handing out real punishment to banks that break the law, fighting loan-sharks that prey on poor people, and maintaining a database of vetted consumer complaints against banks that have ripped them off.